Some major weirdness going on here with the player powerup in my car. After I purchased and installed my Rio car player this problem did not exist. Only shortly after uploading a new boot logo did this problem start.

What happens is when I start my car the player does not powerup, or I should say it rarely does. I usually have to pull it out of the dash and push it back in before it comes on. Not only is this a pain in the ass but extremely embarrasing when demo'ing the player to freinds.

"Hey guys,.. check out my new $2500 mp3 player aint it kewl. Oh hold on a minute I need to yank it out of the dash and push it back in".

This is starting to get really annoying. It does this almost every time if I turn the car off without turning the Rio off first. When I get back in and start the car the little blue lite in the corner just keeps flashing. No buttons or remote will make the player turn on.

When I power down the player by holding the little round button before I turn off the car, sometimes I can push a button to bring it back to life after I start the car,.. sometimes not.

And then here is the whackiest of behavoir. While walking towards my car from the 1 hour photo the other day I could hear what I thought was my stereo playing (my car is convertible). As I got closer,.. sure enough it was. The stereo had turned on without the key even being turned on!!! Obviously this is not good. There should be no possible way for the player to operate without power to the ignition wire.

How is this possible? I am considering hooking both the memory and ignition wires to ignition. That would seem to solve the problem all together but might create more problems.

For everyone who thinks that I may be a rookie car stereo installer,.. I can say I that I have honestly installed 100's maybe even 1000's or car stereos. I think I know what I am doing and I do have the tools to check things out too.

Anyone else experiencing these problems?

[stop the technology madness]

Have you tried re-applying v1.03 and seeing if it's better?

My suspicion is that maybe the boot logo you uploaded was too large, and ran into the "c000" area of flash, which contains the "watchdog powerup" code - this gets run if the power control pic wants to wake up the system when the car is off. This is an as-yet unused feature to allow things like contacting your car via wireless even when the empeg is off. The default code here just does a permanent shutdown, ensuring the unit won't wake up again.

If this got corrupted/erased, then the system would probably do a full powerup as if you'd turned the ignition on - except, the unit should have then shutdown (as the ignition line is low). Does the unit know it's in the car (ie, does the fader option appear in the sound menu?)

Obviously, the logo uploader shouldn't do this, but it may have a bug.

Try re-installing v1.03 (this won't remove your logos) and let me know your results.

Hugo

I'll try re-applying 1.03 to see if that fixes it. I'll have to do it at home though since there is no serial cable here in the office. And yes the player does know when it is at home or in the car. I did read the FAQ on this and my player doesn't sem to be experiencing that problem (i would probably try fixing it myself if it did).

Thanks, for the advice.

[stop the technology madness]

I was experiencing some similar problems... If I left my player plugged all the way into the dash it would not boot after leaving it for a while (30 min or more). The software would lock up as it was loading the database. I figured out that if I pull the unit out (about an inch) before leaving the car, & push it back in before I turn the car on, everything works fine. I don't know if my initial problem still exists because I always pull the player out now.

-Jeremy

Mk2/40GB/Blue

I sometimes get the same problem. I contacted empeg and they said it was probably to do with a negative spike when I shutdown or startup. They sent me a new connector that incorporates a diode to stop this problem. I haven't installed it yet (gonna do it when I put my tuner in) but I know how to start my car so that it happens less. Try contacting the boys at empeg.

_______________________

Steve - 18GB Mk II Amber

The rio-car incorporates this diode already, so this isn't' the same issue; I still think it may be c000 being overwritten, but I'm waiting for news of what re-applying v1.03 did...

Hugo

Obviously, the logo uploader shouldn't do this, but it may have a bug.

!

You're not suggesting that I've written a buggy piece of software, are you?!?!?!?!?!?

!!!!!

().


If he's using my logo editor, even if he loads an incorrect third-party, too-big logo, it should properly truncate the file before sending it. Actually, it doesn't even send his file. It loads the image data from his file into memory and displays that image on the screen. When that image is sent to the player, a fresh temporary file is created, and that temporary file is what gets sent to the player. This file is built from the raw image data pixels, which have hard-coded X and Y limits (128x32), so this temp file should always, without fail, be the exact correct size every single time. I wanted to be sure, you see.

Now, if he's created his own file and is sending it via the command-line (not from my Windows interface), then all bets are off, of course.

___________
Tony Fabris

Problem is, if you overrun by even one byte this will erase the next page. Definitely not more than 8192 bytes?

Hugo

Thems fighting words Tony

Cheers,
Hans


Mk2 - Blue & Red - 080000431

Problem is, if you overrun by even one byte this will erase the next page. Definitely not more than 8192 bytes?

The file in question is ~ele_up.~tm, and as far as I know, it should never exceed 8192 bytes. It should always be exactly that size. Anyone who can show me otherwise, should do so ASAP.

Now I will concede that there could be an error in "upload.exe". But that is primarily someone else's *COUGH*your*COUGH* code. I only added the reboot code and a small bit of Windows serial-port initialization.

___________
Tony Fabris

Mmm, could be an error in upload.exe, I'll have a look. I think John did a few fixes, so I'm unlikely to have the one which you're using - do you have the source file for your that you can email me?

Hugo

Ok,.. I upgraded using the 1.3 image and the whacky behavoir has went away. So it was defintely the logo uploader that caused all the proble to begin with. Just so you all know I used the linux command line uploaded to upload the boot image. The windows version did not work under VMWare for some odd reason,.. and of course I don't own any *real* windows machines.

[stop the technology madness]

Mmm, could be an error in upload.exe, I'll have a look.

Fortunately, Anewsome just reported that he didn't use my software to send the logo, he used something under Linux. So wherever the error is, it's not in my software. Nyah, nyah.

By the way: Anewsome, please check to make sure that your logo file was no larger than 8192 bytes before you sent it. Maybe it wasn't a software problem, maybe it was that your logo file was bad?


- do you have the source file for your that you can email me?

My sources have been stripped down to Win32-only, but you're welcome to them. They are attached to this message.

There are some major changes I made to it, some of which you might want to roll back into your own code:

- Fix for the "Read 0 Bytes" error that happens on some Windows PCs.

- Command-line support for multiple COM ports (no longer hard coded to COM1).

- Will soft-reboot the player for you, no power-pull required.

- Better error and success messages.

Let me know if this has been helpful.

___________
Tony Fabris

In reply to:

---

and of course I don't own any *real* windows machines.

---

You just went up 50 points on my esteem-o-meter (tm).

Ain't you happy now ?

Cheers,
Hans



Mk2 - Blue & Red - 080000431